William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer and Nobel Prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner wrote novels, short stories, and some poetry. He is known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on where he spent most of his life in Lafayette County, Mississippi. As a teenager in Oxford, Faulkner dated Estelle Oldham, the daughter of Major Lemuel and Lida Oldham, and believed he would someday marry her. Even though he wanted to marry her, another boy, Cornell Franklin proposed first. Estelle and Franklin separated 10 years later and Faulkner married her in 1929 in Oxford, Mississippi. Even though Faulkner had a lifelong drinking problem, it never affected his work.However, It caused him to go into a sanitorium more than once and affected his personal life a lot. After his …show more content…
Faulkner made frequent use of "stream of consciousness" in his writing, and wrote often subtle, highly emotional, and sometimes Gothic stories of a wide variety of characters. These characters were from the South, from former slaves, poor white farmers, to even Southern aristocrats.
"His powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel" was why he was awarded the Nobel Prize of 1949. (Nobel Media) It was awarded at the following year's banquet along with the 1950 Prize to Bertrand Russell. Faulkner ignored the fame that resulted from his recognition. It went as far as his 17-year old daughter did not learn of the Nobel Prize until she went to the principal's office one day.
He donated part of his Nobel Prize money "to establish a fund to support and encourage new fiction writers". It eventually resulted in the Faulkner Award for Fiction. He also donated another part to a local Oxford bank, to establish a scholarship fund to help educate African-American teachers at Rust College in nearby Holly Springs,